My brother (not a Christian, for whatever it’s worth) mentioned a few years ago that he read an article that observed, In our culture in generations past, marriage made adults; but now, adults make marriage. Meaning that marriage used to be the (or at least a) default thing that most everyone has to do (relatively young) to become a grown-up and join the rest of grown-up society—and also part of what forms us as we finish growing up and become who we’re going to be. Whereas now it’s thought of as one of many things that a fully formed, fully autonomous, self-sufficient individual adult may chose to add to his life, something like a new hobby or a new car. Unsurprisingly, when it’s presented to them like that, more people than before are choosing not to.

It seems really striking to me when I watch the movie Dirty Harry that even as recently as the 1970s—even in San Francisco—the implication is that marriage was just something everyone did, everyone, even a sort of antisocial outlier like Dirty Harry—and that you could rely on that, take it for granted that everyone did. A stranger asks Eastwood’s character something about his wife at some point, just assuming that he has one, and he and the movie don’t push back on that assumption at all—the answer is not that he never married, but that his wife has died.

On the other hand, this year my brother got married! So I think there’s hope for our culture yet.

Exactly. I made the same point in your first paragraph in one of my posts…have to look up which. Marriage is simply one among many options that a person may choose in order to maximize his personal happiness. We have taught them that they owe nothing to anyone, and that their main responsibility is to find that special something that will make them happy.